Initial margin is the percentage of the purchase price that must be paid in cash when using a margin account.
Fed rules currently require initial margin to be set at a minimum of 50% of the security’s purchase price. But brokerages and exchanges can set initial margin requirements above the Fed’s minimum.
Initial Margin Requirements are different from Maintenance Margin Requirements, which are the percentage of equity that must be kept in the account at all times.
Futures contracts are financial derivatives that oblige the buyer to purchase some underlying asset (or the seller to sell that asset) at a predetermined price and date in the future.
A horizontal spread is a simultaneous long and short position in derivatives for the same underlying asset and strike price, but with different expiration dates.
centner (abbreviated as CWT) is a standard unit of weight or mass used in some commodity markets. It can also be used to determine the price of small batches of goods.
Tick size - the minimum change in the price increment of a trading instrument.
– Tick sizes used to be in fractions (e.g. 1/16th of $1), but today they are mostly decimal based and expressed in cents.